Tampa Bay Rays beat Yankees 5-3

APTampa Bay Rays' Dioner Navarro, center, greets teammates in the dugout after his two-run home run off New York Yankees starter Andy Pettitte during the second inning of a baseball game Saturday.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Slumping Dioner
Navarro hit a two-run homer and rookie Jeff Niemann pitched five solid
innings to win for the first time in more than a month and the Tampa
Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 5-3 on Saturday night.

Navarro,
who has just four hits in his last 33 at bats, homered off Andy
Pettitte (14-8). Niemann (13-6) allowed two runs and six hits to pick
up his team-leading 13th victory in his seventh try.

With
virtually nothing to play for on the final weekend of the regular
season, the AL East champion Yankees have dropped the first two games
of this series with their top two starters pitching poorly.

The Rays beat 19-game winner CC Sabathia on Friday night and will go for a sweep Sunday against A.J. Burnett.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi is more concerned with get ready for the postseason.

In
addition to giving Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez Saturday off, he said
before the game that right-hander Joba Chamberlain likely will work in
relief Sunday and could be headed to the bullpen for the first round of
the playoffs.

Girardi said Chamberlain, 9-6
with a 4.78 ERA in 31 starts, will pitch an inning or face a couple
batters in the finale against the Rays.

With
New York likely to only need three starters for the divisional playoff
round, Chamberlain is open to the idea of working out of the bullpen.
He made his big league-debut in 2007 as the setup man for closer
Mariano Rivera, then worked part of 2008 as a reliever before joining
the rotation.

"It's not something new, so I
have a plan on what I need to do to get ready because I've done it
before," Chamberlain said. "That's the advantage that I have. Just come
to the ballpark, have the idea you're probably going to pitch in a game
and go from there."

The Rays scored three
runs off Pettitte in the second on Navarro's eighth homer and Jason
Bartlett's RBI single. They added two unearned runs off the Yankees
starter without getting a hit in the fifth.

Pettitte
departed after walking Ben Zobrist and B.J. Upton with one out in the
fifth. Both runners scored before reliever Alfredo Aceves even threw a
pitch, racing home on a throwing error charged to Aceves.

With
Aceves about to go into a stretch, the runners took off on an attempted
double steal. Aceves stepped off the rubber and threw to third in
plenty of time to get Zobrist, however the ball glanced off third
baseman Eric Hinske's glove and skipped up the left field line in foul
territory.

The Yankees scored twice off
Niemann in the fifth on RBI singles by Johnny Damon and Mark Teixeira.
Jerry Hairston, Jr.'s run-scoring single off Lance Cormier trimmed New
York's deficit to 5-3 in the sixth.

Niemann,
who hadn't won since Aug. 24, walked one and struck out five. Cormier,
Randy Choate and Grant Balfour, who earned his fourth save, limited the
Yankees to one run over the last four innings.

NOTES:
Teixeira, hit on the left hand by a pitch Friday night, went 1 for 3
and remained tied with Tampa Bay's Carlos Pena for the AL lead in home
runs with 39. ... When Upton hit for the cycle by the fifth inning of
Tampa Bay's 13-4 win Friday night, he became the first AL player to do
it that early in a game since 1954. ... Niemann and fellow Rays rookie
starters David Price and Wade Davis are a combined 25-14. Davis (2-1)
faces the Yankees on Sunday.